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Last week, while I was still away, President Vladimir Putin
ordered the rerouting of a Siberian oil pipeline to avoid the northern shore of Lake Baikal, a world heritage site. See UNESCO site on Lake Baikal

Putin reversed a controversial government decision in March to allow Russia's pipeline company Transneft to build the line within a half mile of
Lake Baikal. The 2600 mile pipeline will provide oil to markets in Asia at a cost of $11.5 billion, which reportedly will be closer to $ 12.5 billion after the rerouting.

Russian environmental groups had protested the initial routing decision. Pacific Environment The NY Times wrote about the impact of public protests on the routing decision: NYTimes link

Rare public protests followed the approval in March of the initial
route, with rallies from Moscow to Irkutsk, the Siberian region
bordering the lake. "It was not a huge wave," Aleksandr
Shuvalov, deputy executive director of Greenpeace Russia, said of the
protests, "but it was a wave." The pipeline's route, so close to
Lake Baikal, raised concerns that an oil spill in the
seismically active region could contaminate Lake Baikal, which holds
more than 20 percent of the world's fresh water and an abundance of
unique wildlife species. Not only environmental groups, but also
Russian scientists opposed Transneft's planned route. A
commission of specialists from the Russian Academy of Sciences
initially opposed the route on environmental grounds. Its
recommendation was rejected and a new review ordered with new
specialists.

Mr. Putin's decision on Wednesday was an
unexpected reversal and appeared choreographed for state television
networks. Meeting with federal and regional officials in Tomsk, a
Siberian city, he publicly chided Transneft's director, Semyon M.
Vainshtok, after asking if there was an alternative to the contested
route. "Since you hesitate, it means that there is such a
possibility," Mr. Putin told a visibly uncomfortable Mr. Vainshtok. "If
there had not been such a possibility, you would have said 'no' without
any doubt."

Mr. Putin then ordered that the route hew more
closely to one previously recommended by the Academy of Sciences but
rejected by a regulatory agency. He said a new route should be charted
at least 40 kilometers, or nearly 25 miles, from Lake Baikal. That
would put it outside of Baikal's watershed, environmental groups said.

Mr. Shuvalov called it "a victory of common sense." The reversal underscored Mr. Putin's highly centralized power and his
penchant for dramatic gestures. Wielding a pen in front of an oversize
map of the Baikal region, he swept aside decisions by several
government agencies, as well as those by Transneft, which had warned
that finding another route would be prohibitively expensive.

Mr.
Vainshtok and other officials from Transneft could not be reached for
comment. They had said that the planned route would be safe and that
moving it could add nearly $1 billion to the cost of the pipeline. When
Mr. Vainshtok, in the televised exchange, suggested that the pipeline
would have to move "much farther north," Mr. Putin responded curtly. "If there is at least a tiny chance of polluting Baikal," he said, "we,
thinking of future generations, must do everything not only to minimize
this threat, but to exclude it."